


Apotropaism

by Sanguinifex (Eros_Scribens)



Category: Shadow Unit
Genre: Case Fic, Evil eye, Gamma Party, Invisibility, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 18:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19025659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eros_Scribens/pseuds/Sanguinifex
Summary: The first time he finds an evil eye bead, Chaz thinks it's a broken necklace. But when more evil eyes keep showing up, he's forced to believe it's not a coincidence. Don't worry, ends well.





	Apotropaism

**Author's Note:**

> Attempting to post with minimal editing from a bus station in Amarillo bc traveling YOLO

I

It started with a glint of glass at a crime scene, tucked away among gravel, where Chaz was sure it hadn’t been before. He was already wearing gloves, so he crouched and picked it up. The tiny mirror-face was not a bit of broken bottle, but a perfectly round disc of blue, with a band of white and a black dot in the middle. An eye, Chaz realized. Sometimes you saw older women wearing them, at that ethnic foods market with the good fenugreek. Maybe someone had lost it from a necklace or earring; maybe that someone was the UNSUB. If it really was a gamma who’d left this body, that was possible. Otherwise? In a place like this, it could have come from anybody. Chaz slipped it into an evidence bag, anyway.

II

For all they hadn’t yet been able to tell how the victim got to that parking lot, “so battered up she might as well be tempura,” the local detective had said, the case hadn’t turned double or serial. The ACTF was forced to consider that this might be a bizarre but mundanely caused death. Frost finally returned an ID from DNA—the dead woman had done an Ancestry.com test—and pretty soon, Hafidha was able to find her Facebook page. She was in a several groups for urbex and free running. The ruined gloves she was wearing suggested she might have died doing one of those activities. Chaz wondered if he’d ever seen her at the climbing gym. He ought to remember, he thought. But she had one of those unremarkable faces, and if they’d worked out at different times or days…. Strange how you could live just a few blocks from someone and never meet.

Hafidha was fiddling with a 3D simulation that looked like a cross between the Sims and Angry Birds. It was actually a low-res scan of the buildings around where they’d found the body. Chaz and Hafs’ current working theory was that the victim had fallen or been pushed while climbing around rooftops, perhaps hitting several other surfaces on the way down. Hafs was going to drop simulated bodies off various points, let them bounce around, and see if any the results came acceptably close to the wounds found on the victim.

“Why’d you make the crash dummy a neon pink monkey?” Chaz asked.

“Because if I watch several hundred iterations of a realistic dummy, I’m going to need to adjust my bugzapper,” said Hafidha. “I’ve randomized it. The program keeps the physics of the victim’s actual dimensions, but we see various cute cartoon animals.”

Chaz was not entirely sure he found that any less disturbing.

A few hours later, they found out where the vic had fallen from. “Jumped or pushed” was still up in the air, but the case belonged to city PD Homicide now. Chaz finished all the relevant paperwork and phonecalls on his end, then left for the parking garage, contemplating dinner.

Looped around his left rearview mirror was a car charm of an evil eye.

III

“Lots of agents get stalkers. It’s just bad luck, really. We’re reviewing security tapes in the garage, and you’ll have police watching your house.” Celentano barely even looked up from his computer has he e-filed the various forms.

“I don’t like the ambiguity of this stalker’s message, even if most of the possibilities aren’t physically threatening,” said Chaz. “On the one hand, evil eye charms are a protective symbol. On the other hand, it could mean ‘I’m watching you.’ On the other hand, which is starting to be too many hands, it could mean the stalker thinks _I_ have the evil eye—it wouldn’t be the first time.” Chaz pointed at his own mismatched eyes. That had definitely been the strangest time he’d ever been banned from a restaurant. Their loss.

“I’m aware of the concept of the _malocchio_ ,” said Celentano, dryly. His computer beeped. “Falkner says she’ll be here in five minutes plus however long it takes to find the next exit in rush hour traffic.”

“Is Agent Gates the one reviewing the tapes?”

“I expect she’ll assign herself to it—though I didn’t specify.”

Celentano was right about Hafidha taking the tapes, and that turned out to be a good thing. About five minutes after Chaz parked his car and walked into the elevator on the day of the incident, a roughly human-sized blur walked over to his car, stood there for about twenty seconds, and then left on what could presumably described as “foot,” leaving the eye behind. This was either some kind of intelligence agency prankery or an anomalous individual. Everyone in the room knew which of these things was more likely, at least in their lives.

Falkner, Celentano, Chaz, and Hafidha—being the responsible and affected individuals in this decision—decided to dismiss the police watch, because if the gamma meant Chaz any harm, the situation was much too dangerous for a patrolman expecting an ordinary if disturbed human. Besides, whatever the gamma’s mythology, it seemed to work on people as well as cameras; that morning, Chaz had discovered he now owned a new set of windchimes, with a clapper in the shape of an eye. (He’d been almost sorry to bag them for evidence; they were quite pretty.)

Having caught an invisible man before, Chaz was clearly the best-qualified law enforcement personnel for the case. He’d jam every time he entered a room, he decided. Hafidha kept an eye out for cell signals that didn’t belong, but for all they knew, the gamma could be too paranoid to own or carry a phone, or was accounting for cell signals, too.

IV

“Chaz?” His phone had taken the call without any input from the man himself. Hafidha, obviously.

“Yeah? What’s up?” Chaz’s feet slapped rhythmically against concrete as he continued his morning run.

“There’s someone in the house. I can hear them, and I can feel the Wi-Fi bounce around and through them, but I can’t see them. Either it’s a gamma, or I’ve really fucked up this version of the bugzapper. So, instead of calling the police, I may have loudly exited the house with my purse and laptop bag, saying something about having been called in to work. And now I’m hiding in front of the hedge with my gun. I’m going to get shot for Freaky Home Invasion Self-Defense While Black.”

“I’ll be back in two minutes and approximately…twenty-nine seconds,” said Chaz. He had already started sprinting back at “There’s someone in the house.”

Hafs was indeed armed and threatening the front stoop, as if it were about to start resisting arrest.

“Cover me?” Chaz asked, pulling his own gun out of his ankle holster. (It made for a good running weight.)

Hafidha shook her head. “I’d be useless. I can tell which room, except not right now because the siding is damping the signal, but the more I try to focus on where it is, the more fuzzy it gets.”

“They’re probably not trying to hide their thinking,” said Chaz. This sounded like the last time. If he could just keep track of where it seemed especially unimportant to look, he would find the gamma, even if somehow he couldn’t locate their mind.

Chaz opened the door, muffling his own footsteps and the creak of the hinges with the mirror. It was harder to reflect sound than light, but when he focused on it, when it was sounds he knew thoroughly, he could do it. He only hoped he could clear the kitchen before things got too shaky, because he’d gone for a run, not a mission, and he’d been planning on a milkshake from the convenience store before he got back.

At first, he could see the slight figure in front of the open fridge perfectly well. Long dark hair, olive skin, surprisingly familiar mismatched eyes. Then, she saw him and immediately went blurry, a slight distortion in the air that he could only see if he jammed hard and didn’t look directly at her.

“It’s okay,” said Chaz, holding his hands up and pointing the gun away. “I’m not going to call the cops. I’m pretty sure you’re just hungry.” He wasn’t, actually, but he really hoped that was the case. He considered trying to project the feeling, but that didn’t always work on gammas, and he really needed more breakfast first. “There’s leftover roast in that red pot on the bottom shelf.”

“You look just like him,” a disembodied female voice said.

V

My mother thinks she deserved it. When that man hurt her, he convinced her that he was an angel of the Lord, and she had to submit. Then she had me, begotten of him, and she hated and loved me. Nephilim, she says, when she’s drinking, and tells me the story. That I look like him, with my eyes. Evil eyes. Well, not mine, probably, but. She was too proud of her virtue, and someone put the evil eye on her, so he saw her. So she wore the _matia_ to keep him from coming back, and put them on me to keep him from taking me. Half the time she curses me herself, and I think once or twice she tried to kill me, when I was very small (but it’s hard to tell memories from dreams at that age), but the rest of the time, her greatest fear is that he’ll steal me away. Not that he’ll hurt her again, but that he’ll take me. Then again, maybe it’s just that she doesn’t have a second virginity to fear losing.

I tried to tell her it made no sense, once. That she should get help. That’s what I thought, then. She threw a bottle at me (it missed) and called me ungrateful, told me I was just like my father. Then she drank until she cried herself to sleep. Neither of us mentioned it again.

Also once, much earlier, I said I wished he’d take me. I was too young to understand what he’d done, or why we were out of food when I wanted more. And that’s the day I understood, and she—I can’t. Sometimes I can’t talk about things.

But then, one day we saw him on the TV, on the news. Just a flash in the background, while this pretty Asian lady is going on about the profile of this serial killer. But Mama flipped. She started screaming that the angel man was on TV and he could see her, and I had to hide her and myself. She tried to smash the TV, mostly just knocked it down really. And then she locked herself in the bedroom and she…she…Can I write this part?

[Yes, Chaz says. He could pull it out of her mind, but that wouldn’t make her trust him.]

_She locked herself in the bedroom, + then she took a lot of pills. My ADHD pills I took 4 school, + then a bunch of regular stuff lk aspirin. I had 2 call 911, just hoped Medicaid’d cover it._

When the medics got there, they didn’t even see me. And then the social worker couldn’t find me, even though I was right there. And then my teachers couldn’t see me, though I did my homework anyway. Really handy for getting extra fries at lunch, though. That’s why I went back so soon, for the food. I eat a lot. The food stamps never go far enough. Doctor says there’s nothing wrong with me and I must be just having a growth spurt, but who knows, they never want to refer Medicaid people for anything. Eventually I figured out how to make things see me again, if I really have to, but I’m so scared of being watched. Like…like….

_Eyes. She used 2 tell me about peeping toms + security cameras + they’re Satan’s evil eye, + then when I hit puberty she just freaked, started making me wear things 3 sizes too big so men wouldn’t look at me, if she didn’t think my clothes were modest enough she destroyed them. I started keeping any pants I really lkd in my locker + changing at school. She taught me her fear._

_Somehow I can’t hate her. I should hate her. She’s in a halfway house now but the family court says she’s not allowed 2 see me + I won’t be 18 for a few more mnths._

But I realized you couldn’t be the man who hurt Mama. The news thing ended up on YouTube, on one of those true crime channels. I wanted to find the man who hurt her and cut his dick off, then maybe she’d be better. But you’re much too young to be him. She always said the man was older than her, and you’re at least ten years younger. So maybe you’re another one like me? Someone _he_ fathered.

I just wanted to say hi, but I was scared, and so you couldn’t see me, and I guess I thought maybe with the _matia_ you’d figure it out somehow. And maybe they’d protect you, because you have a dangerous job and all. It was probably stupid. And then today I just meant to leave another one, but then I saw the fridge and I was really hungry…like I meant to just look to see if you were like me that way too, but then I saw you had protein shakes and those aren’t easy to shoplift, because they’re bulky and heavy….

VI

And that was how Chaz had come home to a teenage girl raiding his fridge.

He’d called in Hafs, and now all three of them were sitting on the kitchen floor, eating breakfast. Maria Parthenia Kokos—Chaz had to wince at that name; talk about impossible expectations—had gotten confident enough that he could almost see her, blurring in and out of focus at the corner of his vision. She still couldn’t handle him looking directly at her without disappearing; it seemed to be a gender thing. Perhaps in time that would go away.

“Is she your girlfriend?” asked Maria, pointing to Hafs with half a Snickers bar. Chaz had gotten out the “rejects bag” of candy he couldn’t eat, once the roast was gone.

“My sister,” said Chaz. “Adopted sister,” he hastily added.

“I am much too old for sibling rivalry,” assured Hafs.

“Tell that to the time you—”

“Prank wars don’t count!”

“So what do you do?” asked Maria. “Do you go invisible too?”

“Nah, I just make Wi-Fi and rule computers and am generally extremely awesome.”

“The invisibility probably isn’t genetic,” said Chaz, swallowing a frozen orange truffle. “It looks like we both had childhoods where being overlooked was at times an advantage. It’s actually one of the more common manifestations.” Chaz popped another truffle into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Oh, and you should know, I can also read minds.”

Maria went completely invisible again. “Did you read my mind?”

“Other than surface level emotions? No. And there, I was mostly just checking that the almost invisible presence in my kitchen wasn’t going to _kill me_. It’s rude, and I hadn’t had enough breakfast. Doing what we do takes a lot of calories. You’ve probably lost weight without trying to, haven’t you?”

There was a pause—presumably the blur, forgetting its head wasn’t visible, was trying to nod—and then “Yeah.”

“If you learn how to turn the auto-invisibility off, that’ll help.”

“Is the man still out there?”

“No,” said Chaz. “He’s very dead. I killed him. He nearly killed me.”

“Oh.” She sounded both relieved and disappointed.

“Did you actually want to emasculate him yourself?”

“A little. I didn’t really have a plan for how to do it. I just thought you might know where he was.”

“Did you want to do that to anyone else?” Chaz kept his voice as casual as possible.

“Not really. Unless they’re also rapists, I guess, but like, I’d have to catch them doing it, and I might accidentally kill them or something, and I’m not sure I can make DNA evidence invisible the same way, or fingerprints, and I really don’t want to go to jail, like you basically can’t do anything if you’re a felon. So no, probably not. Unless it happened right in front of me somehow maybe.”

“But you wouldn’t go looking for it,” said Hafs.

“No.”

“Well, you’re probably not a serial murderer!” said Chaz, with an unsettling, lopsided smile.

Maria gaped. Chaz noted that she was, at least, visible. He continued.

“A lot of people with powers—it’s called ‘the Anomaly’—tend to be violent and delusional. A lot of the others are dangerous by accident. Of course, that’s just the ones we hear about, in the FBI, so there’s probably a certain amount of bias. Likely there are a whole lot of Anomalous people who just mind their own business and don’t cause trouble, so they’re never on the radar. I mean, there’s me, Hafs, a couple of others, who aren’t killing anybody. You, so far it looks like the worst you could do is get hit by a driver who can’t see you. I’m going to have to tell my team about you, and they might make you wear a GPS tracker for a while, but they shouldn’t see you as a threat.”

In fact, Chaz was prepared to _make_ them not see her as a threat, if he had to. The kid was a lot more likely to stay mostly harmless if she wasn’t treated like a criminal or a time bomb.

“So do you have to be anywhere, or do you want to hang out?” asked Hafidha. “I have an amazing gaming rig.”

**Author's Note:**

> There is absolutely no way Chaz doesn't have at least one Anomalous half-sibling out there. Probably more like several. William was a serial rapist for something over 20 years, ffs. (A darker skinned Greek woman would fit William's type, and that opens up the evil eye mythology.)


End file.
